


Poisoned Hope

by thelittlestpurplecat



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Gen, Hurt, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2632517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlestpurplecat/pseuds/thelittlestpurplecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wakes up, completely alone in a HYDRA cell. He's confused, scared and in pain, and there's a weapon in place of where his arm used to be. But Steve's coming for him. He always come for him. He wouldn't leave him here to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poisoned Hope

Pain was the first thing he was fully aware of. It was throbbing; burning through his body. Even the uncertain rise and fall of his chest sent waves of agony through his torso. Pain was followed by cold, and then an acute sense of terror. Where was he? What had happened? Where was Steve?

Bucky’s eyelids snapped open, and he drug in a desperate lungful of frigid air. It fogged in front of him as his hot breath escaped him, the temperature crystallizing it the moment it left his bruised, red lips. Darkness surrounded him, or at least, near darkness. As the man’s eyes adjusted to the lighting he could make out cold gray walls, and a heavy metal door set with a complex lock.  _A prison?_

Bucky shifted, his right hand pressing against the freezing metal floor as he tried to struggle to his feet. Abruptly, Bucky felt pain burning above his left shoulder. A scream tore from his rough, chapped lips, echoing cacophonously around his metal prison. The movement sent spikes of white-hot agony through his body, and he dropped momentarily back to the ground, shaking; numb with shock. Slowly, he turned his throbbing head, preparing himself for the worst, preparing himself to see the stump of his arm, roughly cauterize and  _maybe_ bandaged, oozing blood and puss. He should have prepared more.

The  _thing_  in the place of where his arm had once been attached to his shoulder, was repulsive. Smooth, cold lines of heartless metal jointed together, piece after piece to form the monstrosity. A limb, a metal limb, but it was more than that. It was a weapon, a weapon that had been grafted into his body, a weapon that spread deep inside him, connecting to his nerves, wiring into his bone structure.

Bucky moved experimentally, a wave of nausea washing through him as he watched the cruel metal fingers respond to his command. Bile rose in his throat, and he suddenly doubled over, vomiting. The shock of the movement sent another stab of pain through him as the loathsome metal arm ground painfully against the raw, organic matter it had been so carefully wired into. The arm was more than strapped on, it wasn’t a prosthetic that could be popped on and off with little trouble, it had been worked into his very bones.

Bucky lurched back, his eyes wide with panic. He couldn’t remember, he couldn’t remember what had happen, why he was here. He remembered being on the train with Steve, fighting beside him, hanging on the side of the train, the freezing air dragging at his hair and clothing. He remembered feeling the bar he was clinging to give way, and the look of horror on Steve’s face as he lunged for him. He remembered resigning himself to die, and praying that the ravine was deep enough that Steve wouldn’t have to see his body laying, mutilated, on the rocks. But after that, what happened after that? He had been awake before now, he knew he had, why couldn’t he remember? What had they done to him?

Bucky’s breath caught in his throat, strands of his dark, dirty hair hanging in his eyes as his manic gaze landed on the metal abomination. It branded him, marking him as a slave, a prisoner, a lab rat, and a toy. He wanted it gone.

In a sudden moment of panicked fury and disgust, Bucky reached out, clawing at where the cold metal met his scarred skin, tearing at the flesh with his overlong fingernails. Pain exploded through the entirety of Bucky’s body, as nausea threatened to expel the contents of his stomachs again. Dizziness threatened to send him back the the freezing slumber that had enveloped him until now, but Bucky was relentless. He tore at the arm, pulling until his vision when white from the pain and a scream tore from his ragged throat. His nails sliced the skin open, and he tried to dig under his own flesh to pry the horrible thing off of him. Blood welled around his fingertips, running down his chest and seeping between the arm’s metal plates.

Despite the pain that nearly overtook him, Bucky continued to claw viciously at the seem between his body and the weapon. He moved the horrible metal appendage, the frigid, silver fingers gripping at he seem as he pried with both hands, one working towards its own end. The surprising force he was able to implement with the metal arm sent agony unlike anything Bucky had ever felt slamming into him. He felt like his insides were threatening to yank loose from there resting places within his body, and maybe they were. Bucky didn’t know how much he’d been altered, how deeply they wired this horrible thing into his body. If he succeeded, it may kill him.

But did it matter? He was dead anyways. HYDRA would experiment on him, hurt him, use him as a lab rat until he died, alone, frightened, and writhing in agony and freakish misery. So what was the point? Why not tear this thing out of his body, even if it killed him. Even if he tore the arm free and it dragged his still beating heart out with it, he wanted it gone.

The metal fingers tightened against the seem of the metal, the shoulder plate actually buckling slightly as Bucky screamed in agony. He gave one last vicious yank, feeling chords of muscle and tendons tearing beneath his skin, and his vision went suddenly black.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The numbness of shock had worn off by the time Bucky awoke, still cold, and alone, but this time immobile from the pain. He couldn’t rip the arm off if he wanted too. As it was, all he could do was turn his head weakly to the side, the floor cold, and rough against his cheek. His vision abruptly blurred as tears slipped down his sunken, scarred cheeks, a faint whimper of pain escaping his lips. The metal arm was still connected to his body, the first plate warped only slightly out of shape. Blood had worked its way between the hundreds of individual plates, the scarlet red emphasizing the cold heartless silver all the more.

His shoulder was throbbing, the pain so intense that Bucky was certain he was going to throw up again. The skin was torn deeply, raw angry cuts pushing thick, congealing blood. Some already looked infected, crusting yellow at the edges, blood darkening the oozing clear puss. A sob tore from Bucky’s sore lips as he lay on the cold, hard floor of his prison, alone, in anguish, and forced to be a living weapon without his consent.

The door to his cell opened abruptly, the crash of the door slamming against the wall spurring him to action when he thought it impossible to move. Bucky lurched instinctively away from the door, scrabbling back as he threw his right arm over his head, the metal appendage hanging limply by his side. “No!” He cried, his voice raw, and ragged from screaming.

Rough hand grabbed him and drug him forward, paying little attention to the ravaged flesh about the metal arm. A scream tore from his lips as he wrenched against them trying to free himself as he choked curses between screams and ragged sobs of pain.

Hallways and rooms passed in a blur of struggle and pain as Bucky fought against his captors, blind and nauseous from pain, his legs dragging behind him as he jerked weakly against the HYDRA agents hands. And the suddenly he was being forced down, strapped into a chair. A mouth guard was forced between his teeth, rough hands forcing his jaw to clamp down around it as a metal device was strapped around his skull.

Bucky’s eyes, wild with terror, darted around the room as he squirmed and bucked in the chair, trying to wrench his arms free and pry his jaw apart. And then suddenly, everything was gone, and there was only pain.

Nothing, not even the feeling of tearing his own muscles and displacing his organs in an attempt to tear off the arm could compare to this. It was agony. It was blinding. It was hell.

And yet among the pain, Bucky did manage one though, one, small vein of comfort that kept him holding on:  _Steve’s coming back for me._

Bucky squeezing his eyes closed, gritting his teeth against the indescribable torture that wracked his body.  _Steve’s coming back for me_. He told himself. _He’ll be looking for me, and he’ll wade in and drag me out of here, just like before. Everyone else would have told him I was dead, and he found me anyways. He’s coming. Steve’s coming back for me._

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

 _Steve’s coming back for me_  was the only thing that kept Bucky alive. Day after day of being tortured and tested on, night after night in his freezing cold cell it was  _Steve’s coming back for me_. After every wipe, he had to reremember who Steve was, but it always came back. His Steve, his amazing, wonderful, stupid punk Steve. And then one day, it didn’t.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

 _Someone’s coming back for me_  barely kept him alive anymore. _Someone_ wasn’t good enough, not when he was having trouble remembering his own name, not when he was loosing his sense of purpose and having his life stripped away from him. But still, some days, it still helped to tell himself that someone was coming back for him. Until one day it didn’t.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

No one was coming back for him. It had been weeks.  _Wipe him again._  Months. _Try it once more._  Years.  _Put him in cryo._  No one was coming back for him.

 


End file.
